Wednesday December 21, 2022
Mogadishu (HOL) – Jamal Osman, a UK-based journalist, accused the Somali National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) of barring him from entering Mogadishu, Somalia's capital, and forcing him to return to London.
Jamal arrived in Mogadishu on Sunday to do a program about violence against women and was detained shortly after arriving at Aden Adde International Airport.
Speaking to the BBC Somali, Jamal stated that after he arrived at the airport at 8 a.m., he went to the hotel but was followed by two young men who told him they were eyeing him to confirm his identity.
Jamal added that the two men told him they worked for Somalia’s intelligence agency.
Shortly after, several other officers entered the hotel and sat at a table outside his room.
"Their goal was to intimidate me so that I could not do my job as a journalist," Jamal explained.
A few hours later, he said one of the NISA commanders called him and said that he was denied entry into Somalia because he did a program on al-Shabaab earlier this year and interviewed Mahad Karate, the head of the Shabaab's Amniyat unit, a special security wing responsible for intelligence, attacks and assassinations.
Channel 4 news released a segment in mid-June produced by Jamal Osman entitled 'Inside Al- Shabaab' whereby Osman was granted unprecedented access to Al Shabaab's leaders and training facilities.
Osman interviewed the group's de-facto leader Mahad Karate, the subject of a $5 million US bounty and one of the world's most wanted terrorists, in the middle of an Al Shabaab stronghold.
"The NISA officer told me: "These are the consequences for making stories that we don't like. What is written in the papers [of the law] is unimportant," Jamal explained.
Jamal Osman was later ordered to return to London. He boarded a Turkish Airlines flight from Mogadishu on Monday.